Wednesday, November 14, 2012

The court denied plaintiff's motion for summary judgment that its video compression patents were not unenforceable for patent misuse or unclean hands based on alleged RAND violations. "[S]everal courts have held that a patentee’s violation of its RAND obligations may in certain circumstances constitute patent misuse. . . . [Plaintiff] argues that [defendants] have failed to provide any evidence showing that the patents-in-suit are essential patents to the H.264 standard and, therefore, are subject to any potential RAND obligations related to that standard. However, a reasonable inference could be drawn that the patents-in-suit are essential to the H.264 standard based on [plaintiff's] assertion that the Defendants infringe the patents-in-suit by practicing that standard. In addition, [defendants] have presented the Court with testimony from one of [plaintiff's experts] stating that [two of the patents-in-suit] are by some criteria essential to the H.264 standard. Accordingly, the Court denies [plaintiff's] motion for summary judgment of [defendants'] affirmative defenses of patent misuse and unclean hands."

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Rubin Anders

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reads every patent infringement litigation docket sheet in the US district courts every day. The posts you see here are a small sampling of the Docket Report...see every noteworthy event in current patent litigation, complete with free links to the underlying orders, by subscribing to the Docket Report daily newsletter.